Interview with Malama Binta Abdulkarim

The Global Feminisms Project (umich.edu) is a collaborative international oral history project that examines the history of feminist activism, women's movements, and academic women's studies in sites around the world. The current archive includes interviews with women's movement activists and women's studies scholars in China, India, Nicaragua, Poland, and the United States. We are currently working on adding interviews from Brazil and Russia. The Project is based in the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWG) at UM, which is also the home for the U.S. site research team. Our international collaborators include: - Laboratório de História Oral e Imagem - UFF (the Laboratory of Oral History and Images at the Federal Fluminense University in Rio de Janeiro) and Núcleo de História, Memória e Documento - NUMEM (the Center for History, Memory, and Documentation at the Federal State University in Rio de Janeiro), BRAZIL - China Women's University in Beijing, CHINA - SPARROW, Sound and Picture Archives for Research on Women in Mumbai, INDIA - Movimiento Autónomo de Mujeres de Nicaragua (Autonomous Women's Movement), NICARAGUA - Fundacja Kobiet eFKa (Women's Foundation eFKa) in Krakow, POLAND Malama Binta Abdulkarim was born on February 10, 1956 in Anchau, a town east of Zaria, in Kaduna State, northern Nigeria. She is the Coordinator of Gender Studies, at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and is also Director of Girl Child Education there. She received her degree in Geography from Ahmadu Bello University and along with her leadership role in Gender Studies at ABU which began in 2003, she teaches courses in the Department of Geography and in the Faculty of Science Education. Her special interest in the education and well-being of women at ABU has led to her participation in ASUU (the Academic Staff Union of Universities) as financial secretary, in the National Association of University Women (Nigeria), and in the federal Anti-Corruption Unit, as the university representative who oversees sexual harassment cases at Ahmadu Bello University. She is also an active participant in the World Association of Victimology and has attended association meetings in Nairobi, Amsterdam, and Nigeria, where she contributed to discussions of the victims of weather extremes and the after-effects of war.